Steerpike

Surprised not to see something about this already on BE ....

This sick excuse for a human being paid $35,000 to arrange a 'kill' of this wonderful lion in Africa. They lured the lion out of the (protected) park, shot it with an arrow which didn't kill it, then spent 40 hours tracking it down before it was finally killed. He claims it was a 'legal' action as he had permits.

Cecil the lion's killer revealed as American dentist - Telegraph

Here's the dentist's Yelp page. Yelp keep wiping the negative comments, but they keep coming back. They are up to 5,000 negative reviews as of now ...
River Bluff Dental - 1150 Photos - General Dentistry - Bloomington, MN - Reviews - Yelp

Maybe he can suffer financially and never have the money to arrange another kill.

scrubbedexpat091

Sport hunting needs to be banned, no point to just kill an animal for sport. Maybe it's time the US just ban importing any dead wildlife, would kill the industry if the rich folks doing it can't bring their "trophy" back.


I have no issue with people hunting for food, provided the animal they are hunting is allowed to be hunted and the rules are followed.

However sport hunting just to kill for a trophy, should be banned outright.

Lion in Winter

I see he also has at least one leopard, elephant and rhino to his name. "The sport he loves" he says. Some sport.

audio

What an ar@*hole, I would like to see him staggering about in agony for 40 hours with an arrow up his arse.

Pulaski

All of the above. What a tosser. I hope he is financially ruined by this.

I also hear he faces 15 years in prison in Zimbabwe, so I hope he can be extradited, though I suspect that isn't going to happen.

RoadWarriorFromLP

He has a grisly hobby and too much bloodlust for his own good. But the blame should go to the locals who were paid to provide him with a legal target but didn't.

It's also over-the-top to show a picture of his house in a news story. It's as if the media is hoping to be able to have a follow-up story about his lynching so that they can get more clicks and sell more advertising.

Jericho79

I dont agree with hunting myself, but there is a certain amount of hypocrisy here. Why does the life of a lion hold more value than the life of a pig or a cow?
Why are we content to leave hundreds of millions of chickens in tiny cages, having their arseholes pecked at all day, but we get in uproar over lions being hunted.

Like I said, I dont agree with it, but neither do I get the double standards.

Cardienscarf

This makes me so sad and angry that I can hardly stand it. I look at pictures of that beautiful lion and I cannot comprehend why anyone would want to take his life.

audio

No, he had or should have had a hunting permit and if he read it he would have known the law. The blame is his.

Pulaski

(i) Pigs, cows, and chickens aren't likely to become extinct any time soon.
(ii) Pigs, cows, and chickens provide food, whereas Cecil was stripped of a couple of trophies for display, and left to rot.

I don't see any useful comparison between farming livestock and killing a relatively rare wild animal for kicks.

RoadWarriorFromLP

He paid the locals tens of thousands of dollars to arrange that. It was they who opted to lure a relatively tame lion out of its protected zone, presumably because they wanted to make easier money.

He didn't tell them to go find a celebrity media star of a cat. How would he have possibly known which lion this was?

scrubbedexpat099

I forgot all about Yelp, do people still use it. I always think of this in the Big Bang Theory and how Sheldon took down a local muffin store with a sharply worded comment.

I have 4 and an 1/2 stars btw. But not in the endangered animal hunting business.

Nutmegger

This is so heartbreaking -- the beautiful animal was decapitated, presumably for this a$$hole's trophy wall, and the body left to rot. I read that Cecil had a number of females, with cubs, and that the law of the jungle means that another male will take over the females -- but will kill his cubs. So this idiot's desire to fill a space on his wall started a chain reaction. I also read that this is not the first time the dentist has come up against the law in connection with illegal hunting. The whole story is truly sickening.

sir_eccles

It's a shame people are getting more upset about a lion than about the mass shooting of humans on a daily basis in the US.

That said the dentist is a twat.

petitefrancaise

My dental world (FB and forums) is full of this news, just about all of them absolutely horrified. My friend in the UK was interviewed by Jeremy Vine on radio 2 this morning about it - he is "their" dentist. In the interview Dr Kilcoyne tried to separate out the "dentist" part from the "hunting" part which I think was disingenuous. We are one of the caring professions and to be seen indulging in this behaviour , whether legal or not, creates massive cognitive dissonance which is going to lead to utter condemnation by the public. Leaving aside my personal abhorrence of this hunting, this was a poor choice of hobby indeed.